Turns out burning through $25 billion a year is only fun if the revenue keeps up — OpenAI is having a rough Tuesday. Also: China said ‘no thank you’ to Meta buying one of their AI startups (awkward), Spotify lost 11% of its stock value for the crime of investing in its own future, and Snap fired a quarter of its workforce and blamed the robots. All this and more in today’s AI Daily, where we make sense of the chaos so you don’t have to.
OpenAI Misses Its Own Revenue and User Targets, Rattling AI Infrastructure Stocks
A Wall Street Journal report revealed that OpenAI fell short of internal growth goals for Q1 2026, sending shockwaves through the AI investment ecosystem as partners and chipmakers shed billions in market value.
The company missed multiple monthly revenue targets after losing ground to Anthropic in coding and enterprise markets, according to the WSJ. ChatGPT also fell short of an internal goal to reach one billion weekly active users by end of 2025. CFO Sarah Friar reportedly raised concerns internally about OpenAI’s ability to fund its future compute commitments — a $600 billion pile of data-center spending — if revenue fails to accelerate.
Oracle, which holds a $300 billion, five-year compute partnership with OpenAI, fell over 5%. SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s largest backers, sank roughly 10% in Asian trading. Chipmakers Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD each lost between 3% and 4%. OpenAI, which recently closed a record $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion valuation, pushed back firmly on the report.
“This is ridiculous. We are totally aligned on buying as much compute as we can and working hard on it together every day.”
China Blocks Meta’s $2 Billion Acquisition of AI Startup Manus
Beijing’s state planning body ordered Manus and Meta to unwind their acquisition agreement, which Meta had announced last December as a move to accelerate AI automation across its products. China launched a probe into the deal in January, citing concerns around export controls and technology transfer. The move adds to mounting US-China tension over AI and rattled tech founders and investors who had viewed the deal as a bellwether for cross-border AI mergers and acquisitions.
Spotify Doubles Down on AI Investment, Shares Drop 11% on Earnings
Spotify reported its second-highest gross margin in history and grew free cash flow 54% year-over-year, yet shares tumbled after next-quarter profit guidance disappointed Wall Street. Management attributed higher costs to deliberate investment in AI infrastructure, marketing, and cloud — framing the moment as the biggest product opportunity since the iPhone App Store era. The streaming giant added 10 million new monthly users in the quarter.
Snap Cuts 1,000 Jobs and 300 Open Roles, Citing AI Efficiency Gains
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced a workforce reduction of roughly a quarter of the company’s planned headcount, directly attributing the cuts to rapid advances in artificial intelligence that allow smaller teams to match prior output. The move reflects a broader trend as technology companies restructure their workforces around AI-assisted workflows.